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First time accepted submitter para_droid writes “Version 1.3 of the popular open source notification system for Mac OS X, Growl has surprised its users by going closed-source and only available for purchase on the Mac App Store. Any users who provide links to bugfixes and source for the previous version 1.2 are being banned from the discussion group, and their messages deleted. Could it be time for the community to create an OpenGrowl fork?” The linked post above about bugfixes and source ends “Hopefully the Growl 1.3 branch from the official Growl maintainers will eventually become open source again and get straightened out so that it works for most users, but if it doesn’t, a fork of the project will be able to provide a working Growl to Mac users.”

mahiskali writes “New documents pertaining to the ever-hyped and much-delayed Motorola Droid Bionic have surfaced on the FCC website. Perusing through the documents, I noticed a very interesting feature: an inductive charging coil (click ‘Internal Photos’), built into the battery door housing. It seems Motorola may have some tricks up its sleeve yet–but will it be enough to beat out the competition (read: Samsung Galaxy S2, iPhone 5)?”

itwbennett writes “The rumors have converged and now it appears that Verizon will be dropping its unlimited data plans on July 7, says blogger Peter Smith. Droid-Life lists pricing, starting at 2 GB for $30/month and going up to 10 GB for $80/month. ‘The one ever-so-slightly bright side,’ says Smith, ‘is that 4G LTE will cost the same as 3G. Of course, you’ll be able to burn through your data even faster.’”

mask.of.sanity writes “The first dynamic Android firewall, dubbed WhisperMonitor, has been released by respected security researcher Moxie Marlinspike. The firewall will allow users to stop location-tracking apps and restrict connection attempts by applications. Marlinspike, whose company created the application, designed WhisperMonitor in response to the incidence of location tracking and malware on Android platforms. It monitors all outbound connection attempts by applications and the operating system, and asks users to permit or block any URLs and port numbers that are accessed.”

teh31337one writes “Motorola’s locked bootloader for their Sholes-family devices (Droid OG, Milestone, DroidX, Droid 2 etc, not Atrix 4G) has finally been cracked. @nenolodexplains on his website: The Motorola Sholes platform uses a trusted bootloader environment. Signatures are stored as part of the CDT stored on the NAND flash. mbmloader verifies the signature on mbm before passing control. mbm verifies all other signatures before allowing the device to boot. There is a vulnerability in the way that Motorola generated the signatures on the sections stored in the CDT. This vulnerability is very simple. Like on the PlayStation 3, Motorola forgot to add a random value to the signature in order to mask the private key. This allowed the private key and initialization vector to be cracked. This comes at the time when HTC are also stepping up their attempts at locking down their phones . The recently released LTE flagship — ThunderBolt is their most locked-down phone to date … They made signed images, a signed kernel, and a signed recovery. They also locked the memory.”

jeffmeden writes “‘These aren’t the droids you’re looking for’ proclaims Motorola, maker of the popular Android smartphones such as the Droid 2 and Droid X. At least, not if you have any intention of loading a customized operating system. According to Motorola’s own YouTube channel, ‘If you want to do custom roms, then buy elsewhere, we’ll continue with our strategy that is working thanks.’ The strategy they are referring to is a feature Motorola pioneered called ‘e-fuse’, the ability for the phone’s CPU to stop working if it detects unauthorized software running.”

Maybe you heard, Verizon finally has the iPhone. Or it will, in a few weeks. And you know what that means: it’s time to advertise the hell out of that bad boy. But don’t be surprised if it’s Verizon doing more of the pushing than Apple.

Reports today have Verizon putting their significant “marketing muscle” behind the device in the coming weeks. This should be no surprise given what they’ve done for the iPad â€” a device which doesn’t really even directly connect to their network (though that will change). It’s also in line with what we’ve been hearing for month: that Verizon was getting ready for a huge push in Q1 around some new mobile product. The assumption has long been that this would be the iPhone.

And then there’s what Verizon did for Motorola’s Droid products. Thanks largely to a massive multi-million dollar ad push, Verizon was able to make the Droid the flagship Android device â€” and that’s despite Google releasing their own Nexus models. And interestingly enough, many of the “Droid Does” commercials took indirect shots at Apple and the iPhone. So these new Verizon ads for the iPhone could seem a little awkward at first.

One question will be if Verizon starts putting more marketing dollars behind iPhone ads then Droid ads? It would seem that wouldn’t be in Verizon’s best interest since the Android platform still gives them much more power over their destiny as a money-grabbing carrier. The iPhone, on the other hand, seems determined to turn Verizon into another dumb pipe, like it more or less has done with AT&T.

You’ll notice that in Apple’s current iPhone ads, AT&T is usually only mentioned at the very end with their logo appearing. Sometimes they tout functionality that Verizon can’t match, like talk & surf, but they don’t credit AT&T with that (and even that functionality gap may close soon). It seems likely that any Verizon iPhone ads that Apple does will be largely the same. The focus will be on the iPhone, not Verizon. After all, just as with the logistics of the press conference itself, Apple can’t afford to piss off AT&T, which is still a valuable iPhone partner.

It will be interesting to see if Verizon though directly takes on the AT&T iPhone. You can just imagine them mocking the AT&T iPhone’s inability to make a call. But I can’t imagine Apple being okay with such a plan for the same reason as above. They don’t care who sells more iPhones, as long as it sells. Instead, maybe Verizon would just tout their great coverage and service record in such ads without mentioning AT&T.

AT&T too has long taken shots at Verizon with their ads. Will they also play nice with new iPhone ones? Again, probably. Apple is in the driver’s seat here. If the children are bickering, they’ll shut them up.

But I think it’s safe to say that the “Droid Does” ads as they’ve been currently constructed are over. In other words, “Droid Did”.

Just when we were beginning to wonder if Apple had no response to Motorola's patent infringement suit against it, Apple has responded in kind by filing two lawsuits against Motorola.

The two lawsuits allege a total of six patent infringements by Motorola related to various technologies originally used in the Apple iPhone. The lawsuits filed in a U.S. District Court in the Western District of Wisconsin claims that Motorola has infringed upon as many as six multi-touch gestures related patents used on the iPhone.

Quite a few Motorola handsets too have been named in the suit with the likes of the Android based Droid, Droid 2, Droid X and the Backflip making an appearance in the list.

It was just a few weeks ago that Motorola surprised Apple with a lawsuit it filed with the U.S. International Trade Commission. That lawsuit accuses Apple of infringing upon several Motorola patents for technologies related to 3G, GPRS, 802.11 wireless, and antenna design.

Motorola also alleges that it had asked Apple to license these patented technologies in the midst of "lengthy negotiations". However, both companies did not reach a deal following which Apple "refused" to pay for a license and then used these technologies without the explicit permission of Motorola.

Earlier this month, we discussed news that Motorola had sued Apple, alleging infringement of 18 patents involving the iPhone, iPad, and other Apple devices. In response, Apple has now launched a pair of lawsuits alleging that Motorola is the infringing party, pointing to a number of patents involving touchscreen displays and multi-touch technology, and also methods for interacting with settings and data on a device. Apple wants the court to award them damages and prevent Motorola from continuing to sell the offending devices, which include the Droid, Droid 2, Droid X, BackFlip, Devour i1, Devour A555, Cliq, and Cliq XT.